Project

Globalisation, Climate Change and Urban Public Finance

Globalisation, Climate Change and Urban Public Finance, funded by Indian Council of Social Science Research. New Delhi (2013-15), Principal Investigator Dr Shyam Nath, Amrita School of Business, Amritapuri Campus, Kollam, Kerala, India.

During globalization and vanishing national borders, multinational firms tend to operate from their offices located in the major cities of different countries, independent of their country of origin and location of production and processing units. Similarly, climate change has accelerated the vulnerability of cities in general due to pollution and coastal cities in particular due to sea level rise. It is contended that these global developments would increase the demand for local government operations and entail expansionary effects on urban local expenditure. Researchers have examined the local fiscal response to reassignment of local functions to governments at higher levels and increases in grants-in-aid. However, the expansionary dimensions of local fiscal responsibility due to globalization and climate change have not been addressed in the literature, which is the concern of the present study.

The main objectives of the proposed research can be arranged as follows:

• Review the impact of globalization and climate change on expenditure and revenue assignments of Bombay and Delhi municipal corporations (now split into three municipal corporations) and their fiscal response; 
•  Evaluate the human and financial resource capability of these corporations to meet the emerging challenges;
•  Analyze the relative efficiency of municipal vs other governments in undertaking globalization and climate change induced urban tasks;
•  Examine the expansionary impacts of additional fiscal responsibilities on local expenditure and its implications for local financial viability;
•  Assess the environmental compliance by FDI and local firms and scope of local government environmental policy;
• Design revenue-expenditure mechanism to transform local government entities to meet the challenges of globalization and climate change.

The methodology of the proposed study consists of theoretical and empirical literature review, hypothesis building, collection of published data and primary data generated from CVM and econometric analysis.